Easter Sunday (the beginning of the season of Easter)

Sermon Title: "Practicing Resurrection"

Resurrection

Joy! What does this mean? So maybe we were right all along? That this is the big sign that tells us the Messiah will be here forever, that Israel will be restored?

Jesus to Mary: Don’t cling to me, for I have yet to return to my Father

Road to Emmaus: Disciples, “We had thought he would be the one to restore Israel”

The disciples in Acts 1: We know about all that stuff before, but IS THIS THE TIME you will restore the kingdom to Israel?

In our Good Friday worship gathering, I spent time trying to wade into the reasons why that fateful day when Jesus was executed like a common criminal, like so many thousand other Roman prisoners, how that day could be considered good, and I offered one perspective on that: that Good Friday was and is Good because it reveals that God’s purposes are bigger than the purposes we often settle for.

That Israel had gotten locked into a certain way of seeing the way things should and would go, and God knew that, and God needed to break them out of that.

That God had built into the foundation of his people very early on that they were to be a light of His salvation to the very ends of the Earth, not just sit on their blessings like a hen on her eggs; because sooner or later those little chicks hatch and their muscles never develop, and they wither away and die if they do not eventually leave the nest.

God said to Israel, “It is NOT ENOUGH for you to be my servant…I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth." This is what the LORD says—who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you."



The deepest meaning of the resurrection is not just that Jesus rose from that dead, as absurd as it sounds for me to say that. The prophet Elijah raised a young boy from the dead, Lazarus was raised from the dead, the apostle Paul raised a man from the dead who had fallen out of a window because he fell asleep while Paul was speaking, Peter raised a young girl from the dead. The deepest meaning of Jesus’ resurrection doesn’t reside in the reality that he didn’t die, because there are even two other persons who flat-out never died, Enoch and Elijah, with Elijah being taken up and away from Elisha in a chariot of fire.

No, the deepest meaning of the resurrection is not just in our remembering the event 2,000 years ago. The deepest meaning of the resurrection is that Jesus’ victory over death is to set an example for us; that it is to be a foretaste, a whetting of our appetites, for the promise that death is not the end for us all.
As the apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15,

“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. 6After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

12But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.
20But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 23But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. 24Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

If you are a human being in this room today, you know that there is one thing that you and I will all face one day, whether that day is today or five or ten or eighty years in the future, and that is DEATH. Every single one of us will die, and we know this, so we obsess over ways to avoid death, to prolong life, to protect our desire to have a long life, we KILL others so that we can live more comfortably and live longer.

And yet the resurrection of Jesus tells us, forcefully, that if we are his people, We. Don’t. Have. To. Fear. Death, that death is not the end, that one day we will be resurrected together to enjoy God in the blazing light of his glory, that he will wipe every tear from our eyes, that there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. But this promise is not for everyone. In our culture, we tend to think after we all die, somehow we all sprout wings and float up to heaven where we play harps and hang out with our loved ones all day. But hear the word of the Lord through Paul.

Philippians 3:7 But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 10I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

For Paul, this resurrection wasn’t guaranteed, but it wasn’t as if he was wringing his hands, wondering if he had done enough, he wasn’t obsessing over whether his feet were getting hot from the fires of hell licking at his soles, no, Paul knew that he had been saved from slavery to selfishness, slavery to lies, slavery to what he thought was true before and saved to slavery to Jesus, slavery to a lifestyle marked by obedience, a lifestyle of radical love and radical forgiveness, a lifestyle of seeking each day to…

But outside of all these things, Paul made something incredibly clear in his teaching; the resurrection of the dead will not take place for everyone, and that includes a good number of those who are confident, that know that they know that they have been “saved.”

The fact remains that some of us in this room today, myself included, will likely be massively surprised on judgment day when we stand before the throne confident that we have been “saved,” only to hear the words “Away from me, I never knew you.”

You see, Paul knew what God has always known and expected; this faithfulness bit is meant to flow from the core of who we are, to affect all that we think about, all that we act on, it affects where we work and how we handle ourselves when we work, it affects our relationships and who we spend time around, it drives us to give our money and energy and time for the poor, the broken, and our enemies, it messes with us, it frustrates us, it pushes us to shine brighter, to love deeper, to never be satisfied…and to be so committed that we don’t even see how much our lives are blessing the lives of others, healing relationships, turning around communities, restoring hope where before there was darkness…

And the most incredible thing about this is that along the way, if we pursue this kind of love, this kind of single-mindedness, we won’t spend time considering whether we’re “gonna get to heaven” or whether we’ve “done enough to avoid hell.” We won’t be naïve enough to believe any preacher or person that tells us that our lifestyle is irrelevant, that the only important thing is that we pray for forgiveness, and we’re going to heaven is a LIE, a LIE from the pit of hell.

God placed a spark inside of all of us when we were created to desire him, to be fulfilled and satisfied in obeying him, and to know that nothing else matters outside of this commitment. But so much obscures, muddies the waters, tells us something different, and we need to cling to the truth that we have been created for this, that we must desire this…because this path will bring suffering, it will bring persecution, it will bring persons labeling us as self-righteous, as a holy-roller, as unpatriotic, as certifiably insane.

But what they say and do doesn’t matter, because Jesus conquered death, scoffed at it, so that we might scoff at it, so that we would be released from fearing it. It is this kind of hope hundreds of millions of Christians have lived with; have known they have been set free to practice, to live out the resurrection in their daily lives.
Bishop Desmond Tutu, from 1985, in the midst of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. He said,

If it weren't for faith, I would have given up long ago. I am certain lots of us would have been hate-filled and bitter…. In the middle of our faith is the death and resurrection. Nothing could have been more hopeless than Good Friday—but then Easter happened, and forever we have become prisoners of hope.

Apartheid says that we are created for separation; the Scriptures say ‘Rubbish.’ We are created for unity, for fellowship, for communion. Apartheid says that people are fundamentally irreconcilable; the Scriptures know nothing of this. It is denying what we might call the central work of Christ: attaining reconciliation. God was concerned with reconciling the world to (God’s) self.

Apartheid goes on to inflict an unnecessary and unjust suffering and misery on God's children just because they are black. Therefore, we are calling on Christians to say that they oppose this not for political reasons, not even for economic reasons, not even for the fact that they are worried that human beings are made to suffer—but because the people supporting this are behaving in an un-Christian way.

We are not saying it in any self-righteous kind of way. We are saying we are trying to be as true to the imperatives of the gospel as we can. And almost always it will expose you to suffering, to ridicule, and to worse.

If after the horrible event of Good Friday, when even the physical nature seemed to mourn, and darkness covered the earth—if after that you see the glorious resurrection, what can ever be worse than that moment?

And what can ever again make you doubt that if God be for us, who can be against us? If that has happened, what can ever again separate us from the love of God? What chance does the South African government stand? There is just no hope for them. And they really ought to listen to us when we say, ‘We are asking you to join the winning side.’ When we say we are on the winning side, it isn't that God is on our side because we are good; it is because (God) is that kind of God. (“Prisoner of Hope. An interview with Desmond Tutu” by the editors of Sojourners. Sojourners Magazine, February 1985.)

Bishop Tutu demonstrated what it means to be joyful though you have considered all the facts. He and others like him refused to take up the sword but instead practiced resurrection in dismantling apartheid. It enabled him to overcome his fear even when confronted with enormous evil.

May we seek this lifestyle joyfully. We are not alone, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, our brothers and sisters over thousands of years who have walked this path, we are surrounded by our brothers and sisters around the globe serving Christ in the midst of intense suffering and pain.

For Christ is risen! This mysterious God who has remained faithful through our neglect, idolatry, and apathy has defeated death forever, and who can believe it's really true? Stacked against our faith is the reality of countless injustices in our communities and nations, horrifying examples of the ways we use the force of evil to destroy and degrade one another. They persist despite Christ's example, his life among us, and his death and resurrection. But Christ is risen, alleluia! The assurance of life's triumph over death is the only weapon we need for our constant struggle for justice in the world.

Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again!

What does it mean for us to not just say we believe in the resurrection that took place 2,000 years ago, but to truly practice resurrection today in our world?